Gallipoli

The Gallipoli Educational Activities booklet features a brief introductory activity called 'Getting Started', followed by seven separate activities designed to encourage student interaction with the rich range of historical sources in the Australians in World War I: Gallipoli commemorative publication.

Some activities utilise the videos and interviews on the Gallipoli iBook, which you can download for free to your iPad.

Chapter 10: Land is very dear here

Hill 60, 21–28 August 1915

While the August Offensive raged at Anzac, the British at Suvla had been slow to consolidate their positions. By the time the offensive was over, the Turks had brought up enough reinforcements to hold the British to a small area of the western part of the Suvla plain. At the southern end of the British line and the new Anzac line there was a gap, overlooked by a rise at the end of one of the ridges, known as Hill 60. It was felt necessary that this position be denied the Turks, as it was thought to be dangerously close to the main line of communication between Anzac and Suvla. Consequently, between 21 August and 28 August recently dug Turkish trenches at Hill 60 were assaulted by a combined British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand force.

The initial assault on 21 August was a costly failure. The Australians involved—men of the 13th and 14th Battalions from New South Wales and Victoria, units exhausted and depleted in the 4th Brigade's failed effort to take Koja Temen Tepe (Hill 971) in the recent battles—were badly hit when crossing a shallow valley on their advance towards Hill 60. To make matters worse, enemy shells started a fire on ledges among captured Turkish bivouacs that were made from branches of cut scrub. Charles Bean described the scene:

The flames, reaching some of the dead or wounded, ignited their clothing and exploded their bombs and rifle ammunition, and thus pieces of burning cloth or wood were flung to other ledges, starting more fires. Any wounded man who so much as stirred to crawl out of reach of the flames was instantly shot by the Turks.

On 22 August, the 18th Battalion (New South Wales), only recently arrived on Gallipoli and described by an old Anzac hand as 'great big cheery fellows, who it did your heart good to see', were sent against Hill 60. Commanders on the spot felt that only fresh, fit troops would have a chance of taking the position. The first wave managed to get through a gap in a hedge in a wheatfield below Hill 60 and into a captured Turkish trench. Other waves were not so lucky. Three Turkish machine guns were now brought to bear on the wheat field, inflicting heavy casualties. Among them was Lieutenant Wilfred Addison:

... [who] with dying and wounded men around him, and machine gun bullets tearing up the ground where he stood, steadied and waved forward the remnant of his platoon until he himself fell pierced by several bullets.

In its first action of the war the 18th Battalion, which had set out from Anzac 760 strong, took 383 casualties, of whom approximately 190 were killed. In subsequent actions on Hill 60, the unit suffered a further 256 casualties; within a week of coming to Gallipoli more than 80 per cent of those 'big cheery fellows' were dead, missing or wounded.

Further attacks on Hill 60 between 27 and 29 August involved, again, the men of the 4th Australian Brigade, the 9th Light Horse Regiment (South Australia) and the 10th Light Horse Regiment (Western Australia). The attack by the exhausted and worn down soldiers of the 4th Brigade was quickly shot to pieces by the Turks. A planned artillery bombardment on the trenches facing them never happened and, as the Australians rose to attack, Turkish rifle and machine-gun fire was raking the parapet of the trench above their heads. The first wave was, in Charles Bean's words, simply 'swept away'. There followed a night attack by the 9th Light Horse who, in confused fighting, gained little; their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Carew Reynell, and a great many of his men were killed or wounded.

During the night of 28–29 August, the 10th Light Horse, the unit already hard hit by their costly attack at the Nek on 7 August, attempted to take a trench on the top of Hill 60. In a fierce bombing battle, the Western Australians inched the Australian line closer to the summit, holding off repeated Turkish counter-attacks. Throughout the action Lieutenant Hugo Throssell, despite his wounds, refused to leave the action and kept encouraging his men. Next morn-ing he was observed, as he tried to smoke a cigarette, by Captain Horace Robertson at a medical aid post:

He took the cigarette but could do nothing with it. The wounds in his shoulders and arms had stiffened, and his hands could not reach his mouth ... [his] shirt was full of holes from pieces of bomb, and one of the 'Australia's' [shoulder badges] was twisted and broken and had been driven into his shoulder.

Throssell was awarded the Victoria Cross, the last to an Australian soldier on Gallipoli. It was, wrongly, believed that the light horsemen had seized the summit, but it was later felt that they had pushed the line far enough up the hill for the battle to be called off. At the cost of more than 1100 casualties a position had been gained on the slopes of Hill 60 from which there was a view out over the plain. A New Zealand soldier, Corporal James Watson of the Auckland Mounted Rifles, accurately summed up the Hill 60 fighting:

We gained about 400 yards [360 metres] in four days ... 1000 men killed and wounded. Land is very dear here.